It's been a long time--6 or 7 years I think--and since I don't play lots of tutors, I don't look through the decks as a whole after they've been assembled. When I'm looking to replace a card, I stop once I get to the card I'm replacing. At some point in the middle of a game, I drew a card that I already had on the battlefield. Scratch my head an immediately search through the deck. I came to find that I had three different copies of Masked Admirers in thedeck--one foil, one Italian foil, one regular. I've been more vigilant ever since.

It's been a long time--6 or 7 years I think--and since I don't play lots of tutors, I don't look through the decks as a whole after they've been assembled. When I'm looking to replace a card, I stop once I get to the card I'm replacing. At some point in the middle of a game, I drew a card that I already had on the battlefield. Scratch my head an immediately search through the deck. I came to find that I had three different copies of Masked Admirers in thedeck--one foil, one Italian foil, one regular. I've been more vigilant ever since.

Well I guess we'll have to agree to disagree that there is no problem, but I'm referring to the difficulty new and different cards have of making the cut against the staples of the format. Like I'm sure there are people out there that are tired of seeing capsize, eternal witness, Sol ring, karmic guide, demonic tutor etc... every game.

So to get back to the question, what do decklists look like in your idea state? How do you increase diversity?

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sir squab wrote:

My... history of buying Magic cards is probably a tapestry of bad financial decisions >_>

The points concept seems like it would help, and it could be implemented as a format variation. You don't actually need to check if people have the correct points in casual games, in the same way we generally don't check it people have a 99 card deck. If you do have to do a check for a mini-tournament you can always get people to show their points then you will know if they play any other card that had points.

It seems to be a good system for Australian Highlander. It is in effect a soft ban, which I like and might allow cards to be taken out of the sin bin with appropriate points. You have more options for playing cards but limited in the number of cards you can play together.

However it wouldn't achieve the stated goal of increasing diversity any more than the existence of Brawl, or providing any other deck building restriction or format variation. You are moving the goal posts, and people will adjust. Decks will be iterated on and you will still have a group of cards that are the best choices for spending your points. It is the inevitability of every magic format that doesn't inject constant changes.

Unless the newest cards do something significantly better or different to the ones we already have, you will get stagnation. Standard rotates, but the further back you go the more static the format is.